#KillAllMen

Why #KillAllMen Is A Thing That Exists

It’s like some sort of lurid carnival game, glittering in the middle distance, both inviting and entirely rigged.

It can be very tempting, when one’s human sub-group is challenged, to respond in kind. It doesn’t matter whether it’s about sex, religion, race, automotive preference or whatever else — we’re a factional, partisan sort of species, and we tend to react strongly when our “team” is called out. That’s why the recent Twitter trend of appending the #killallmen hashtag to various female grievance-oriented posts is such a frustrating phenomenon: It’s a direct provocation, and something of a mass movement, but it’s also too crazy to pay much attention to. It’s certainly too crazy to flip into some sort of #killallwomen-type thing and go crusading. These types of things just drag us all down.

As a printing press-level historical innovation, the internet has entirely changed the way in which we speak to each other, and on how we communicate. On the one hand, it has instantly made the lion’s share of human history, culture and knowledge available to anyone who connects. On the other, though, it lets us say stupid and inflammatory things without much personal blowback.

Guess which usage-pattern is more popular?

Back in the 1950s and ‘60s, one of the most common complaints on the part of women’s rights activists was that we didn’t take them seriously. It was a lot of “yes, dear” and “you’re so cute when you’re angry.” We weren’t listening, apparently, to what they were saying.

Things change. In a blog post, “another angry woman,” writer “stavvas” opens her defense of the “kill all men” slogan by saying “nobody is actually planning to kill all men.” According to (probably) her, it’s just a “shorthand war cry,” a “structural critique, presented in a provocative fashion.” Continuing in this (dishonest, dissembling) vein, stavvas reminisces about being part of a reading group that was studying would-be Andy Warhol assassin Valerie Solanas’ “SCUM Manifesto,” which calls for the extermination of the vast majority of male human beings. She notes that “the power of SCUM is the effect it has on men,” but regretfully notes, “It’s pretty difficult to mention SCUM (or indeed just cry “kill all men”) without the misogynists crawling in, crying misandry.”

I wonder why that is?

Look at the imagery here; look at how the “misogynists” — men who actively hate women — “crawl in”, like snakes or centipedes, ruining the productive discussion for everyone. Look at how the only possible reason that one could have for opposing the idea of killing all men, or finding it essentially misandric, is pathological misogyny.

How is one supposed to respond to this? It’s like some sort of lurid carnival game, glittering in the middle distance, both inviting and entirely rigged. How can any man — excepting the (masochistic, ideologically suicidal) “allies” noted by stavvas, who opined to the reading group that the manifesto didn’t go far enough — participate in this sort of discussion?

“Yes, but…”?

“Yes, dear”?

There’s no point. There isn’t anything there for us. One can’t reach any sort of understanding with a person who is both committed to saying inflammatory things, and determined not to mean them.

We’re all a little bit crazy. Most of us, for reasons pertaining to both morality and the fear of consequences, manage to contain it — but we’re all made of the same stuff. Blood and guts, nature red in tooth and claw, the blindly amoral matter of the universe. We all, in our innermost minds, are capable of turning daily (or even systematic) slights and grievances into vast and bloody revenge-fantasies. But we don’t actually voice them. Because it’s crazy. And because history is full of examples of what happens when we do.

In terms of the #killallmen phenomenon, one of the more quotable voices is Twitter user @greatauntanna, who attempted to rationalize (in the “Heinrich Himmler” sense) the battle cry by tweeting, “Not endorsing that we #killallmen, (some of my best friends, etc), but reducing men to 1 in 4 would solve many of Society's problems.”

Genocidal, right? Worth opposing. But if you look at the replies, you notice that she goes on to claim that “reducing the human population to zero would certainly sort out the [sic] 100% of this planet’s problem.” Continuing in this vein, and in reference to her preferred methods, she notes, “I was thinking of foeticide, rather than bumping off 3/4 of the current male population. But then again I've got a little list…”

This person isn’t well. There’s nothing to be gained here.

Just walk away.

Years ago, I walked into a bar with an ornery but fun-to-drink-whisky-with friend. On our way to the taps, a guy was throwing elbows, yelling, kind of incoherent. As my friend prepared to confront (read: deck) him, I noticed something a little off about the guy; his eyes weren’t all there, his facial structure was strange. I said, “Just don’t mess with him. He’s not right. He’s not right in his mind.” And so my ornery buddy reined in his retaliatory instincts, and we went on to have a varied and interesting conversation that lasted until the smallest hours of the night.